Thursday, February 25, 2010

Last night as I pushed my trolley round Asda (here pronounced, with the bizarre Bristol terminal ‘L’, as ‘Asdal’), keeping one eye on the steering and the other on my shopping list...

...the following announcement sounded over the tannoy: “Passionate about service; would all till-trained staff come to the check-out please. Passionate about service; would all till-trained staff come to the check-out please.”

Fortunately I was able to face this with equanimity, since I have recently attained a high level of Zen wisdom.

I bet even sheep wouldn't touch marrow, Malty. My husband once attempted to recreate his mother's stuffed marrow recipe, stung by my assertion that it could not be rendered edible. The resulting mush of sodden mince and vegetable fibre was so disgusting that we were reduced to hysterical weeping (perhaps because supper was perforce mostly alcohol).

If Wikipedia is to be believed, "marrows" are squashes. I never knew that.

No one actually eats squashes. That's why the call them "squashes."

You carve them up for halloween, make pies out of them, use them as decorative features for autumn festivals and sometimes, if by accident you've dropped rat poison into a dish, you can cut up zucchini as a signal to your guests to give it a pass; but you never eat them.

(Except for some reason in Chinese food, where they are cooked for 24 hours straight and highly seasoned or in Japanese restaurants, where they are breaded and fried, which makes anything edible.)

Marrow doesn't taste of much but is perfectly edible if chopped small and fried with garlic and tomato. Courgettes are just fab with garlic, parmesan, black pepper. As for sprouts, this is black heresy: a properly parboiled sprout sings like an angel in its sphere.

On the other hand, about the only good thing I heard of Bush Senior concerned his personal war against broccoli. Said that people had been trying to make him eat it all his life, and now that he was the most powerful man in the world he just wouldn't. (Actually its almost OK if you defy the British custom and eat the stalks, not the florets.)

brit - as far as I am aware, a marrow IS a large zucchini. Zucchini are simply marrows that have not been allowed to grow to the seedbearing stage.

I personally have to say that I really like all vegetables, and any I haven't liked have been down to poor cooking, as I genuinely think that just about any vegetable can taste delicious if given the proper stage on which to shine

Jonathan - I believe that if a vegetable can't stand up and be counted on its own, without garlic and tomatoes, then it doesn't deserve to be called food. I'm sure I could eat cardboard if it was cut up and cooked in such a way. I am, however, totally with you on the sprout and here is a recipe from Rules in London which will, I promise, make you very happy: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/recipes/article2180708.ece

Finally, I'm not normally one to go on about word verification but I'm happy to report that mine is 'pearl'. Does that make you lot swine?

If a Charlie Whelan job needs performing on any vegetable then let that be the sprout, vile little devil that it is, causing apoplexy in those cases where suppression is attempted and acute embarrassment where it fails, should be marketed under the heading 'methane generation kit'

I love that expression 'store bought' as in 'store bought woman' or, in my younger days 'store bought clothes'